Hooksett awaiting school documents from Derry

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HOOKSETT — Despite expecting to be presented with a copy of a newly negotiated sending contract with Pinkerton Academy, the Hooksett School Board was informed during a non-public meeting with the district's attorney that the contract isn't expected to be ready in another week or so.

Board members also did not receive copies of negotiated Memorandums of Understanding with the Bow, Londonderry and Pembroke school districts that would allow students who don't want to attend school at Pinkerton Academy or in Manchester other options.

"So this was a change, we really believed that we would have all those documents, so it will be near impossible that we will have them by the Nov. 19 school board meeting when we were supposed to vote on them," board member David Pearl said.

Pearl added that he believes a further complication is that the school board budget must be presented to the Budget Committee by Nov. 27.

"We have no tuition number in our budget, so this is a problem for us, we need to put that number in the budget, and we have no number as of right now. I don't know how we are going to solve this," Pearl said.

However, Hooksett School Board Chairman Trisha Korkosz said that she is unconcerned.

"I expect everything to be finalized before we have to turn everything over to the Budget Committee. It is just taking longer than expected; nothing is falling apart. We are nowhere near warrant article problems yet," Korkosz said.

However, Korkosz acknowledged that the contract and Memorandums of Understanding might not be ready in time for the Nov. 19 meeting. She added that the delay in the delivery of the contract and Memorandums of Understanding are not necessarily due to a snag in negotiations.

"We are eager to receive them and move forward, but negotiations are a two-way process and we are dealing with the availability of a varied group of people," Korkosz said.

Despite not receiving the contract and Memorandums of Understanding, Pearl said he still plans on holding a meeting on Nov. 18 with fellow board member John Lyscars, which he said was originally intended to go over the agreements with the public.

"We are continuing on with our meeting, the Londonderry (Memorandum of Understanding) is actually available on the Londonderry District website, so we are going to go over that, and we are also going to go over the settlement agreement that we reached with Manchester to prematurely terminate our sending contract," Pearl said.

Korkosz, who along with Hooksett School Board members Phil Denbow and Cheryl Akstin, have said they won't attend the meeting, said that Pearl's meeting is a violation of Hooksett School Board policy.

"Forty percent of the school board can call a special meeting, but that meeting is not supposed to be posted unless a quorum can be established, which it can't," she said.

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